Radford Leicester soon recovered from the wound he had received in his heart, but he did not recover from the blow which was struck at his faith. All his old cynicism and hopelessness reasserted themselves. Whenever he spoke of women he spoke bitterly, his outlook on life became less cheerful than ever. Then another element entered his life. Up to this time he had not been a hard drinker; but now the taste which he had inherited grew stronger. Drink made him forget his wounded pride; and, confident in his boast that no distilled spirits could ever affect him outwardly, he indulged in this evil habit more and more freely. Still, pride was not dead. Professing, as he did, that life was a miserable sort of affair at the best, he still had ambition. He wanted to carve out for himself a place of position and power. His party had found a constituency for him, and he had contested it. At the time of the contest, however, the political opinions which Radford had adopted were not popular. His opponent won the seat. Again he was embittered, again his pride was wounded, and the habit which had been gaining in strength now seemed to have obtained a complete mastery over him. Thus Radford Leicester, who had never been known to be drunk, was a drunkard. He had no faith in man; he had no faith in God. There was one power in his life, however--ambition. He wanted to be renowned. He knew that he possessed unusual abilities; his career in Oxford had proved it; his friends had admitted it a hundred times in a hundred ways. Moreover, the vice which had mastered him had not degraded him in the eyes of men. Only a very few knew that he was a hard drinker. He always dressed well, spoke clearly, and walked steadily. Of his cynicism he made no secret, of his repudiation of the Christian story and of Christian morals he almost boasted; nevertheless, nearly every one spoke of him as a man who would make a great name. Besides, to weaker men he had a kind of fascination. He inspired others with his own recklessness, and many almost admired his scorn of conventional beliefs. In a way, moreover, he was liked. While repudiating accepted morality in theory, he was in many respects most punctilious about points of honour. When he gave his word he never broke it. In his political speeches he never pandered to popular cries. He did not say things because they were popular, and even while he declared that all men had their price, he was never known to sell himself. At the present time many eyes were turned towards him. He had become a great favourite in his constituency. The leader of his party had come to speak at a great gathering, and when, as the accepted candidate, he had also to address the meeting, the great man had been simply carried away by his speech. As he remarked afterwards to his colleagues, it was the speech of a statesman and an orator. It might have been Macaulay, or Burke, who had come to life again.